Year: 2019
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: This paper aims to elevate stories of design by people with disabilities. In particular, we draw from counter-storytelling practices to build a corpus of stories that prioritize disabled people as contributors to professional design practice. Across a series of workshops with disabled activists, designers, and developers, we developed the concept of biographical prototypes: under-recognized first-person accounts of design materialized through prototyping practices. We describe how the creation of such prototypes helps position disabled people as central contributors to the design profession. The artifacts engendered an expanded sense of coalition among workshop participants while prompting reflection on tensions between recognition and obligation. We end by reflecting on how the prototypes-and the practices that produced them-complement a growing number of design activities around disability that reveal complexities around structural forms of discrimination and the generative role that personal accounts may play in their revision.
Institution: University of Washington
Language: English
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: bronze
Awards: Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), CHS: Small: Collaborative Research: Repair, Maintenance and Sustainability: Enhancing Sustainability by Strengthening the Design/Repair Nexus, CAREER: Enhancing the Integration of Craft and Computing, CHS: Small: Collaborative Research: Examining the Design and Use of Internet of Things Technology in Public Life
OpenAlex ID: W2950508306